How to Take Your Education Publishing Business Global
The global publishing market is estimated to grow by $23.73 billion from 2020 to 2024. How big is your piece of this pie? The best way to ensure that your business grows with this growing market is to take your publishing business international. The good news is that individuals, enterprises, and educational institutions are increasingly turning to digital content. While this was inevitable sooner or later, the COVID-19 pandemic has played a key role in pushing the transition forward rapidly.
So, how do you go global successfully? Here are some steps that can help.
Analyze the International Market
Trends, demand, and consumer needs will vary from region to region. Entering a market without understanding it well is almost like setting up to fail. So, the first step is to decide which markets you wish to enter and when. Most businesses prefer to do it one region at a time, establish your foothold and then move to the next.
So, create your timelines and roadmap based on market analysis. Learn when the “selling season” is for the specific country. To gain inroads into the market, build strategic local partnerships, to gain more in-depth information on the market.
Choose Your Digital Publishing Platform
Of course, the platform you choose should offer you all the essential tech tools and features for smooth and seamless operations. More importantly, a cloud-based platform will give you easy worldwide reach. This is because with a cloud-hosted solution, you can host the platform anywhere in the world. This helps your servers remain in physical proximity with your end-users, meaning better digital performance and user experiences. You can even host data at physical data centers in each country that you enter, eliminating potential time lags.
Related Reading: How to Go International with Education Publishing Business
Multilingual Support
Even the English-speaking part of the world has so many differences in terminology. Just consider the difference between US English and UK English. The larger part of the world is made up of non-native English speakers. To be able to make in-roads into countries in Asia, Europe, or Africa, you need to provide multilingual support and publications in the local language.
What if we told you that you could actually choose a cloud-based platform that offers you the tools to create multilingual content? Sounds too good to be true? Well, that’s not even the best part. You can quickly and effortlessly convert your legacy publications into IDPF-compliant ePub3 content within minutes or choose to offer support for multiple content formats, all from a single platform.
Offer a Branded App with Robust DRM
For the most satisfying user experiences, allow access to all your offerings via a single web or mobile app, compatible across multiple devices and operating systems. In addition, you get to manage all your content, digital rights, licensing, and subscriptions from a single point. With a bespoke app, you offer a unique look and feel that talks of your brand value.
With the right tech tools, you can also support different sales models across different regions, including short-duration access and bulk B2B selling. With high-end security and DRM features, you gain complete control over who can access your content and for how long, while preventing piracy via screen-grabbing, copying, and more.
Custom Data Analytics
The key to business success is to track the performance of your offering in each region and then fine-tune your strategies accordingly. For this, you need powerful analytics that throw up easy-to-understand customized reports, such as content consumption patterns, which titles are doing better, engagement levels, and much more. This is why you need to ensure that the digital platform you choose includes a powerful and customizable analytics dashboard that offers you deep insights for data-driven business decisions.
Ensure Compliance
Every country has its own set of regulations regarding digital content. For instance, FERPA and COPPA protect student data in online learning in the United States, while GDPR ensures the protection of privacy online in the EU. So, when you conduct your market research on each country, also learn about the local laws and regulations. This will help you ensure compliant offerings and eliminate the risk of legal consequences.
Once again, the right digital platform can help you with this. Some industry standards are accepted all across the world, such as ePub3, LTI, QTI, etc. Make sure the platform you choose complies with such global standards. Also, seamless integration with third-party apps can be a huge advantage.
Apart from all this, make sure that you offer an eReader that allows for personalized user experiences, offline access in regions with unreliable internet connectivity, and features such as read aloud and captioning for greater accessibility.
Are you ready to take your publishing business international? Talk to our award-winning team for a results-oriented approach.
